LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. THE fountains mingle with the river, See the mountains kiss high heaven, January, 1820. TO EMELIA VIVIANI. MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me Sweet basil and mignonette? Embleming love and health, which never yet In the same wreath might be. Alas, and they are wet! Is it with thy kisses or thy tears? Such fragrance drew endears My sadness ever new, The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee. March, 1821. ΤΟ I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, Innocent is the heart's devotion LINES. WHEN the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies deadWhen the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot. As music and splendour Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute: That ring the dead seaman's knell. When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled To endure what it once possest. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home and your bier? Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high: Leave the naked to laughter, TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. (With what truth I may say- My lost William, thou in whom Which its lustre faintly hid, But beneath this pyramid Where art thou, my gentle child? The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild; Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass A portion June, 1819. ONE word is too often profaned One feeling too falsely disdained For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love, MUSIC. I PANT for the music which is divine, My heart in its thirst is a dying flower; Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, Loosen the notes in a silver shower; Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain, I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound, More, O more,-I am thirsting yet, It loosens the serpent which care has bound Upon my heart to stifle it; The dissolving strain, through every vein, Passes into my heart and brain. As the scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake; When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slake And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue As one who drinks from a charmed cup Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine. LINES. THE cold earth slept below; With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow, The breath of night like death did flow Beneath the sinking moon. The wintry hedge was black, The green grass was not seen, On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost had made between. Thine eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light; On a sluggish stream, Gleams dimly-so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair That shook in the wind of night. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved; The wind made thy bosom chill; The night did shed On thy dear head Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie DEATH. DEATH is here and death is there, All around, within, beneath, First our pleasures die-and then These are dead, the debt is due, All things that we love and cherish, ΤΟ WHEN passion's trance is overpast, It were enough to feel, to see PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine, It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Have woven all the wondrous imagery Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world; Infinite depths of unknown elements Massed into one impenetrable mask; Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron. And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns In the dark space of interstellar air. LIBERTY. THE fiery mountains answer each other; Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone; The tempestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter's zone When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around, Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound Is bellowing underground. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast; From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night In the van of the morning light. ΤΟ MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed; To sit and curb the soul's mute rage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, meet Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw Thy soft persuasion on my brain, Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thou and me. Gentle and good and mild thou art, Nor I can live if thou appear Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart Away from me, or stoop to wear The mask of scorn, although it be To hide the love thou feel for me. THE ISLE. THERE was a little lawny islet By anemone and violet, Like mosaic, paven: And its roof was flowers and leaves Which the summer's breath enweaves, Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze Pierce the pines and tallest trees, Each a gem engraven. Girt by many an azure wave With which the clouds and mountains pave A lake's blue chasm. ΤΟ MUSIC, when soft voices die, Love itself shall slumber on. TIME. UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, LINES. THAT time is dead for ever, child, At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; Its waves are unreturning; But we yet stand In a lone land, Like tombs to mark the memory A SONG. A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind kept on above, The freezing stream below. |